Home Page of Leo J. Rain, M.D.

I am a retired physician who specialized in Internal Medicine for over forty years. In the last ten years of my career I was involved in Medical Ethics, stimulating me to undertake study in the Department of Philosophy at California State University at Northridge with emphasis on basic philosophy and practical ethics. I am now involved with the development of the Center for Ethics and Values at CSUN. While a member of the Center, I have written several articles on ethics for the business community. Here is a representative list of the articles:

I also did a statistical survey in 1996 of the moral development of CSUN students using a questionnaire developed at the Josephson Institute of Ethics and in cooperation with members of the Departments of Philosophy, Department of Political Science (Professor Phil Present), and Department of Psychology (Professor Linda Fidell). This research involved a survey of 450 students. Through the research, I learned about surveys and statistics, and also about the way people learn their morality, i.e., moral development. Ideas on moral development go back to Aristotle and come up to modern times through Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget and on to the works of Lawrence Kohlberg and of James Rest.

With respect to medical ethics, I am strongly opposed to legalizing the killing of patients by anyone, because it is too easily open to abuse by patients who are confused, families, and especially doctors. Euthanasia in Holland has been legal to some extent for a number of years and is being carefully studied especially by the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force. In the Los Angeles Times front page of Nov 13, 1996, President Clinton agreed with me that legalizing euthanasia would be too open to abuse. The next day there was an article about Dr. Timothy Quill who is an advocate of euthanasia under strict conditions to control the possibility of misuse. I would trust Dr. Quill but not many others.

Comments and questions about my ethical views or my statistical research are welcome; email me at leo.rain@csun.edu.

Page last updated October 12, 2000